Choices are what decides everyone’s path, even my small choices in life will decide what I end up doing for the rest of my life. When I had to make the important decision of what to eat for dinner I came across one of the best things I’ve ever eaten, a breakfast burger. When I went out to the 110 Grill with my family last weekend I wasn’t to excited, it had been a relaxing day with not much action at all and I really didn’t want to leave the house. But my parents sadly made me go. I entered the restaurant, then the smell hit me, bacon. There’s a certain thing about even the smell of bacon that it can almost make a person feel like their eating breakfast on a Sunday morning. When we got seated and were handed our menu I immediately looked for what item on the menu was creating the great aroma. Then I found it, The Breakfast Burger. On the breakfast burger there was applewood smoked bacon, cheddar cheese, a fried egg and on top tater tops, all barely held together by two buns. In other words this was the king of all comfort foods and heaven all in one burger. It didn’t matter that I really didn’t want to go out. It didn’t matter that I had said what I had said, and it didn’t matter that all I really hated to do was stay home and just relax. All that really mattered at that moment was that on my plate in front of me I had the best burger ever, the breakfast burger I found a good lesson in this and that is even if you really don’t want to do something it can be well worth doing it in the end.

I think writing this iambic trimeter was much easier then writing the two iambic dimeters that we wrote earlier. I don’t know why but I think it may have been because know I understand the flow of the poem more and also because we wereable to choose our own rhyme scheme. At first I couldn’t think of something to write about then I heard the train go by and my forts though was to write about sounds. Then since it was night I decided to write about the sounds of night. When I started writing my second stanza about the whistle of a train I realized that trains use their whistle to communicate just like a wolf howls to communicate so I used that same line. Then I realized that I could use the same last line as well by and all I had to do to make it fit was change the beginning. As a whole I think this wasn’t as bad of an experience as I thought it would be.

Writing this iambic dimeter poem was pretty hard because this is my first time ever writing one of these poems and also because it was hard to have the rhythm in the poem and to also have the ABAB rhyme scheme. What I’m hoping to achieve in this poem is to just show the excitement of when school is finally out and summer begins.

The dream so grand

Yet hard to find

Hard as the sand

Yet seems so blind

It feels so free

Yet it’s so unique

There by the sea

By the boutique

This iambic dimeter poem was also pretty hard because I still haven’t really gotten good at this type of poem. I was really stumped by what to write about so I started to write random things that rhymed and I really liked what I ended up writing. I decided to not give this poem a title because it was about life in general and it didn’t need a title.

Music can provide so many different factors to help someone in certain situations.In particular music helps me stay focused when I’m studying, doing homework or doing class work. When I listen to music I like to listen to Rap and Hip-Hop, I like these genres because they usually are fast and high energy songs not a slow song with very little energy in it like country or something. Every study hall or class I’m allowed to listen to music I’ll take out my headphones and listen. I do this because I would rather listen to music then to listen to a kid complaining about the work or a teacher yelling at a kid for doing something stupid. An example of this is during Latin class Mrs. Libby usually lets us use headphones and I think when she doesn’t since we have a very loud and talkative class we get distracted and talk but when everyone’s using headphones people can’t hear each other so there’s no one being super distracting to the rest of the class. Some people may argue though that the listening music gets us distracted shuffling between songs and some people start dancing and singing to the music their listening to, I think that yes sometimes there is that kid who starts singing along to his favorite song besides that kids don’t really get distracted by their music. It doesn’t matter what type of music you listen to or why you listen to it music can help provide the energy or calmness you need at that time. It also helps to cancel out the noises around you so you can focus on what your doing.

Where on the deck my Captain lies, fallen cold and dead. This is my favorite line from the poem O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman. Everyone in our class had to choose a classic poem to memorize for a school wide competition called the WW Fenn. I chose the poem O Captain! My Captain! because I didn’t want anything to long because I’m not very good at memorizing but I didn’t want to choose anything to short or else it would look like I just choose the easiest piece I could find. I found a random poetry website and was only finding poems that were really good but way to long. Then I found O Captain! My Captain! The words that are used in this poem would make you think that it’s a poem about a captain on a ship but it’s actually about the death of Abraham Lincoln. When I heard that we only had one week to memorize our whole poem I was a bit worried, but now that were a few days in I realize that it’s not as hard as I thought it would be originally all you have to do is keep practicing.

Reading provides a totally different experience that nothing else can provide. The Swiss Family Robinson is a great classic that provides an experience that no other type of book can provide besides a classic. While reading The Swiss Family Robinson it brought me to a place that nothing besides reading can bring you to. This project is an experience that I’ll never forget, not only because it taught me new vocabulary words or because it was a completely different style book then I like reading but because it was one of the very first classic books I’ve ever read. I started reading The Swiss Family Robinson because we were required to read a classic for a project that Fitz does every year with his class. We were expected to read the book that we choose in one month, and along with that we had to write a literary reflection and a blog post about anything every week. Along with a lot of other people I was not excited for this project, but after I got a few chapters into my book I wanted to keep reading and eventually didn’t have much of a problem with the reading part of the project. About a week in I got into a flow and was finally ready to face the fact that I would have to read every night. There were so many different themes portrayed throughout the book, I found these themes in many different instances, for example when the father and one of his sons are going on adventures around the island looking for sign of life or when they have to figure out a way to get to land from the boat after it crashes. Just like the family they had to accept the challenges about living on a remote island I to had to accept the challenges of this project. At the beginning of this project you may have heard me complaining about having to read a book and write two paragraphs each weekend. But after everything I would say that it was a good project and it was well worth it in the end.

"Dogs are like that, I guess. They know how fix you, without ever saying a word."

-Anonymous

Owning a dog makes a person happier and that’s a fact. You would only understand this if you own a dog not of your one of those cat owners. Everyday I wake up to my dog jumping up onto me and sniffing my face to make sure I’m still alive, now if a cat jumped up on your bed you wouldn’t be able to even tell. Dogs also will always make you keep exercising by bringing their favorite toy to your feet or making weird loud noises by the door. One way that my dog does this is by going with my mom upstairs and pointing at or pawing at the drawer with all of her running clothes because my dog loves to go running on the trails. You wouldn’t be able to play outside with your cat or take them on a walk, it just wouldn’t work. Dogs can also get jobs unlike a lot of people in the world, they can be therapy dogs, military dogs, police dogs or service dogs. I’ve never seen a cat doing any of those unless sleeping counts. Dogs can also always make you happier by doing something funny like constantly rolling around in the grass or jumping around or running around the house like crazy when you bring out their cookie box. One thing that my last dog did was every time we came home from somewhere she would greet us at the door with a random shoe in her mouth, she never ripped the shoe or anything and it was always a different shoe. There are so many different things that make dogs a better animal than a cat it’s not even a competition.

"Calmness is a human superpower. The power to not overreact or take things personally keeps your mind clear and your heart at peace."

-Marcandangel

Reading has brought me to a place of absolute calmness. Every time I open up and start reading The Swiss Family Robinson, by Johann David Wyss it brings me to a different place then the normal world and entirely calms me down. Reading The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss forced me to read in a more focused and intensive way then I’ve read before. The way everything is worded is very similar to The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer because it’s from a time when they spoke like that. This more difficult wording has made it so I can read through each page as fast so it takes me a bit longer to read each page. I was sick all this week so every time I tried to read I would start coughing and I would lose focus and lose my spot on the page. I decided to listen to the audio version and follow along, this way was much faster and I think I might continue doing this at night instead of just reading. Although I had a sickening headache, cough and fever the entire time just being in my warm bed when I was non stop coughing was much more calming than I thought it would be. Maybe having those three things isn’t very calming at all when you start reading or listening to a book it becomes just that much calmer and relaxing. It’s kind of tough to relate to a story about getting stuck on a remote island because of a boat crash because that’s never happened to any of us but I did find one similarity. The family goes through a lot of challenges throughout their journey and we all go through challenges on our own journeys it may not be struggling to survive but it’s still a challenge. When I heard that we had a month to read a book I thought that was plenty of time but then I heard that we would have to read at least 30 minutes a day and that if you wanted to only read one book it would have to be at least 350 pages so it couldn’t just be a short 100 page book. It’s worth it to do one of the most calming things in the world.

Speeding down a snow covered hill going off all the little jumps on the side of the trail of then finally I get to the bottom of the hill and jumping right back onto the lift to do it again. This is one of my favorite things to do, skiing. If you’ve never been skiing your missing out on one of the most exciting and fun things in the world. What makes skiing so fun is that you have so much freedom and you can do so much on skis. My favorite part about skiing is going through double black diamond glades. Glades are so fun because your constantly having to make tight turns, there’s always little jumps or drops on the side of the trail. My absolute favorite trail that I’ve gone on was a trail up in Stowe. The trail was called Spruce Line and at first we didn't know what we were getting ourselves into when we went off trail into the woods. We finally found a real trail and of course it was moguls, halfway down Charlie and I went off trail again hoping it would be easier but it was all powder and there was no real path. When we finally got to the bottom of the trail we collapsed backwards into the snow, it was the most tiring and fun run I’ve ever done. My dream is to sometime be doing this in Colorado or Utah down what’s called a back bowl and to also go see the X Games in Aspen, Colorado. Whether the temperature is negative five or the snow is coming down and covering everything like a blanket I will always want to continue skiing.